MPs are asking for £75,000 a year, but, asks Dan O'Neill. how many of the 650 running the country are worth the £65,738 they’re already getting?

So who is that singing “Oh what a beautiful morning” over the breakfast boiled eggs and wholemeal soldiers today? Why, who else but – here name the MP of your choice – because, come on, you must have heard, because he or maybe she is in line for a probable 10 grand top-up.

The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) reckons your MP’s pay should catch up with civil service salaries and is expected to recommend a raise next month.

That would give your very own MP more than £75,000 a year but even that’s not enough for our boys on the back benches. Most thought they were worth £86,000. Some said £100,000 should be the going rate. Who wouldn’t?

The word that jumps out here is “worth”. Why not pay MPs £100,000 – if they’re really worth it? But how many of the 650 currently cocking up the country are worth the £65,738 they’re already getting? Or in some cases even the 400 quid the first salaried MPs were paid 1911.

How many? Do I hear 100? 50? And from my pet anarchist: “None of the sods. Except Dennis Skinner and Paul Flynn.”

Think about that £100,000 a year.

A Premiership star’s weekly pay packet, twice or three times that if you’re Rooney or Tevez or Touré. Maybe that puts things into perspective, but those players reached the pinnacle of their profession on merit.

Manchester United or Arsenal haven’t so far fielded a striker because his auntie once went out with the owner or a goalkeeper because his father was the club’s bagman in 1976 or because he went to the right school. (Although I wouldn’t bet against a lad who calls Abramovich his uncle turning out for Chelsea some day.)

So let’s have a proper selection process instead of a system where mediocrities are pushed into Parliament through the Old Boys’ network – think of the über-windbag Christopher “Fatty” Soames and his cousin Young Winston, handed seats because their grandfather was Old Winston. Think of those unremarkable men who came up through the union ranks, rewarded for always toeing the party line.

So why not rigid tests to determine whether they’ve got what it takes? That way puts a block on pompous nonentities, family friends, old school chums with no discernible talent. Meanwhile, no-one without real work experience should be a candidate, a couple of years in the world outside Westminster should be mandatory. How much do our present leaders, stepping straight from university into a sort of political apprenticeship, know about the problems facing the rest of us?

And no jobs outside politics. For £100,000 a year we’d want our MP to work full time at being an MP. Meanwhile, it should be at least two years after leaving Parliament before your ex-MP moves smoothly into a sinecure on offer because of contacts made while in Parliament. There’s too much temptation the way things are. Ask Tony.

Expenses claimed for travel or meetings only when connected to the job. No more claims for moat-cleaning or a Memorial Day wreath. Or for a tin opener costing all of six quid – as claimed by our former (Labour) Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy, who also got us to cough up for a £35 toilet roll holder. Mind you, he was only on £141,886 at the time but that’s the mindset our MPs develop.

No more freebies, euphemistically described as fact-finding tours. If modern technology – Skype, for instance – is good enough for big business board rooms it’s good enough for our MPs. You want a session in the Seychelles? See a travel agent.

And for God’s sake, let’s see an end to the howls, the oafish hoohahs and hurrahs, the foaming-at-the-mouth hysteria, the apoplectic bellowing, the sycophantic slobbering and pitiful points-scoring that is Prime Minster’s Questions in what we are still daft enough to call the Mother of Parliaments. We don’t expect Socratic dialogue or the verbal felicities brightening the duels of Churchill and Bevan, but we should at least expect respite from playground posturing.

We should also expect politicians to put the national interest before vote-getting, principles before party or personal vanity. When Cameron was asked why he wanted to become Prime Minister he replied: “Because I think I’d be good at it.”

Not because he was eager to battle the country’s problems. Not because of a desire to end inequalities, to regenerate our industry, to attack shortages of housing and jobs. No, “Because I think I’d be good at it.” As it happens, he isn’t, but his answer tells us something about his posh boy’s sense of entitlement, even arrogance.

OK, give them their pay rise – on condition changes are made. Pay peanuts, some say, and you get monkeys. So pay more and clear out the monkeys. Remember, they are OUR monkeys.

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